The stinging Vespa mandarinia can grow as large as 2-1/2 inches (6.35 cm) in length and is native to Southeast Asia, China and Taiwan.

According to British Columbia’s agriculture ministry, a nest was found and destroyed last August at Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, and a single specimen of the hornet was found in November on the B.C. mainland, at White Rock.

On the U.S. side of the border, individual specimens were found in December near Blaine, Wash., just south of White Rock, according to Sven-Erik Spichiger, managing entomologist at the Washington state agriculture department.

Those findings indicate a “probability” that nesting hornets are overwintering in the area, the province said in March, noting wooded habitat offers suitable nesting grounds.

The “murder hornet” presents a danger to agriculture and the apiary industry, Spichiger said, because the insect is known to attack honeybees, with a few of the hornets capable of wiping out an entire hive in hours.

“The hornets enter a ‘slaughter phase’ where they kill bees by decapitating them. They then defend the hive as their own, taking the brood to feed their own young,” according to the Washington state department of agriculture website.

“Pollination is a huge part of agriculture and the agricultural systems we have here in the United States. And so if this were to become well-established and then start spreading, it could be pretty catastrophic,” Spichiger said.

Also. if provoked, “an Asian giant hornet can sting you multiple times and deliver larger doses of venom just because of the size of them. The venom itself is fairly toxic and creates localized necrosis around the wound so you’ll see melting flesh around the wound,” he told Reuters.

“What we’re told from the literature is that most people can survive one or two stings,” he said. “But if you sustain multiple stings, the necrosis and the venom will actually start getting into your bloodstream and will start working on your organs. And multiple stings could literally be fatal.”

Scientists don’t know for sure how the murder hornet made its way to the region. The most likely scenario is that it arrived on a container ship. Intentional transport of the bug into the United States would violate federal law.

Following the discovery of the first hornet, a web page set up by Washington state agriculture officials to report additional sightings of the insect has received several hundred reports, Spichiger said.

British Columbia’s agriculture ministry also wants people in the region who may have seen Asian giant hornets to report sightings to the Invasive Species Council of B.C., with photos if possible.

The ministry noted several large insects common to the region — such as yellow jackets, bald faced hornets, elm sawflies and horntail wasps — could be mistaken for Asian giant hornets.

While Asian giant hornets do not generally target people, pets or large livestock, they can attack when threatened or if their nest is disturbed.

“We really don’t want any private citizen trying to mess with an Asian giant hornet nest. Typical beekeeping attire will simply not protect you. The stinger on this insect is six millimeters long and will go readily through most clothes,” Spichiger said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Omar Younis; writing by Dan Whitcomb. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Operation Pollinator is a program of Syngenta Canada Inc. with the objective of encouraging bee populations to assist with pollination of commercial crops.

It is coordinated by the Soil Conservation Council of Canada. Provincial partners include the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association, Agriculture Research and Extension Council of Alberta and Manitoba Conservation District Association. Ducks Unlimited Canada also assists with field inspections and coordinating tours of plots.

Operation Pollinator pays $100 per acre for each year. For me, that was sufficient incentive to proceed and give the project I try. It has been my pleasure to be a cooperator in this program for the past two years.

The site

The ideal site is about one to two acres in size and a piece of ground that does not fit in well with large-scale crop production.

I have just such a site. It is in the southwest corner of a quarter section with sloughs that make access difficult, particularly in recent wet years. A complicating factor was a neighbour’s bin yard at the property boundary that resulted in huge snowdrifts that delayed access to the site for seeding. That is simply a statement of fact, not a complaint.

Operation Pollinator supplies a mixture of seeds that includes timothy, birdsfoot trefoil, alsike clover, red clover, yellow and white sweet clover and phacelia. They ship the seed in two well-sealed bags with 22 pounds of seed mixture in each bag.

In 2017 it was not possible to seed the corner. At the time the rest of the quarter was seeded to peas, so the corner was seeded to barley later with an old 15-foot discer, just to keep the weeds down. It was a mixture of barley, broadleaf weeds, foxtail barley and volunteer canola that was cultivated in late summer and fall to prepare a suitable seedbed for the pollinator seeds in 2018.

2018 seeding and results

The spring of 2018 was dry with only a few showers of 0.1 to 0.3 inches. On May 15, the site was worked with a cultivator with 16-inch sweeps, shallow and fast to break up lumps and foxtail clumps. A hard thing to do for a zero-till farmer but I had no suitable equipment to seed into what was there.

On May 30 there was 0.1 inch of rain and the forecast suggested that a significant rain of 1.5 inches was likely for June 1. On May 31 the plot was broadcast seeded using only one bag (22 pounds) of the seed mixture. That was more than 10 lbs./acre so I thought it best to save back a bag of seed, just in case. I then went over the plot with the cultivator with sweeps just levelling the ground and the mounted tine harrows to cover the seed.

The big rain forecast for June 1 turned out to be only 0.4 inches. I suspected that not much would happen but by June 8 a few plants were emerging, including a strange plant with notched leaves that I had not seen before (phacelia). The total June rain was only 0.9 inches in small amounts.

July offered promise with 0.75 inches July 1 and 0.85 inches July 4.

The July rain brought the phacelia on quickly and by July 20 it was in full, glorious bloom. When I first visited the site in bloom the buzzing of bees was audible as soon as I got out of the truck.

The downside to the pretty blue/purple flowers was that the neighbours wondered why I was letting that Canada Thistle thrive! Not long after, DU staff came along to inspect and erected a sign that made it clear what I was up to.

Paul Hoekstra of Syngenta alerted me to the fact that clovers will be slower, but they will show up. By September 5 his wisdom was illustrated in spades. Phacelia is an annual, but it did set lots of seed that did germinate in a test I did inside over winter.

Full disclosure: What you are seeing are selected good parts of the two acres. I did not mix the seed well enough before spreading so parts were mainly phacelia, other parts more clover and some areas of weeds. Fortunately, the really good phacelia area was right next to the road!

The final operation in 2018 was to mow the entire site on October 18.

2019 results

Drought was the order of the day in early 2019 with only 0.5 inches rain in May. A fair bit of clover, mostly sweet clover did come up as it had rooted well, but growth was slow.

Richard McBride of DU asked about a tour and I was not sure that there would be much to see. But by early June it was obvious that there would be a respectable stand of sweet clover so I happily agreed to a tour for June 20. The tour was cancelled because of drought. But, June 20 was our first good rain of the year — 1.6 inches nice gentle rain. If the tour had been held it would have been rained out. Such is the way of Mother Nature. On June 22 we received an additional 1.7 inches of rain so the sweet clover was off to the races.

Wayne Leonhardt, a beekeeper neighbour, had seen the first phacelia in 2018 so he set up a hive of bees right next to the project. As it turned out, there was not much phacelia in 2019 but the bees, honey and wild, had a heyday in the sweet clover. There was a good crop of honey and I am enjoying the honey Wayne gave me.

There was a very large seed set of sweet clover. I did not have the appropriate equipment to swath and combine the seed. Had that seed been harvested those acres could have been my most profitable.

The future

If you have a little piece of ground that is a nuisance and grandpa that might like the challenge, or a 4-H girl or boy looking for a project, take a look at Operation Pollinator.

I am not sure about the future. There is more than enough Sweet Clover seed to ensure a stand next year. Also, I still have half the seed so could seed the entire plot again. Whatever the future, I have enjoyed the two years and learned a lot.

For more information about getting involved in Operation Pollinator, visit Syngenta’s website.
– Leeann Minogue

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Let’s get down to the facts. First of all, honeybees can technically be classified as invasive pests since the honeybee, Aphis melifera, is not native to the Americas — or Australia or New Zealand for that matter. The honeybee is native to Europe, Asia and Africa and in these continents, it exists in 20 or more strains all of which are compatible breeding wise. The killer honeybees that got loose in Brazil in 1957 were from Africa and have now invaded the Southern United States. As invasive pests they have, via sheer stinging numbers and allergic reactions, estimated to have killed hundreds of people. The venom of the tame (Italian) honeybee in North America, that we are familiar with, is just as potent as that of the “killer bee” and upwards of 50 people die annually from allergies to these tame bee stings on this continent. Something that’s never mentioned.

Bees have been “domesticated” for thousands of years in the “Old World” as prime producers of honey. These mild Italian honeybees are now worldwide in their distribution on every continent except Antarctica. Over the years domestic honeybees have unfortunately accumulated many fungal, bacterial, viral, insect and mite pests that now infest beehive colonies worldwide. These pests and diseases certainly came from wild honeybees and likely other related species of wild bees from Australia to the Americas. Worldwide there are some 20,000 bee or bee-like species. Some 2,000 or more species of bees, syrphids (hoverlies or flower flies) and other relatives pollinate flowers in North America.

Unfortunately, these many destructive pests and diseases present in beehives can kill or weaken domestic honeybees. If the bees are subject to stress, such as movement of hives or inclement weather condition such as wind, rain and cold, these diseases can be lethal. A recent paper published by CropLife International (an international association of crop protection corporations) cites varroa mites as the prime killer of honeybees worldwide. In this same document the writer lists: five major pests that included mites, beetles and moths; four bacterial and fungal diseases; and 18 infectious viruses, many of which could kill honeybees in days. The highly destructive colony collapse that can wipe out 30 to 40 per cent of bees overwintering in Canada has been linked to varroa mites and virus infections. Another factor was that pesticides used to rid bee colonies of mites could also be a major factor in colony deaths actually killing off the honeybees.

Placing blame

When beehive colonies die out or show very poor vigour or low honey production, the easiest target to blame is not these natural causes but pesticides. In particular, insecticides. While we are fully aware that insecticides can kill bees, farmers growing agricultural or horticultural crops are generally cognizant of the beehives in or near their cropland. Bee kills are avoided when farmers are informed.

In the present dispute in Europe and North America involving insecticidal seed treatment with neonicotinoids (neonics) it seems very farfetched that seed treatments of corn or soybeans in Ontario with these insecticides are killing off honeybees. How could the insecticide dust from planted treated seeds arise and infest flowers in and around cropland? The dilution on the insecticide factor alone would be huge and it would have to land on an open flower.

This “story” reminds me of a problem back some 30 years ago when lindane as a canola seed treatment insecticide was banned in Canada.

Scientists were finding trace levels of lindane in the blood of individuals living in Canada’s Northern Territories. It was surmised and given full credence by many scientists that dust from treated canola seed in Saskatchewan was becoming airborne and being deposited hundreds, if not thousands of miles further north finding its way into human water sources. The true answer was that individuals in the Northern Territories were using a propriety brand of shampoo that contained one per cent lindane for control of head and body lice.

The need for bees

Beekeepers and various and sundry individuals frequently tout the extreme value of bees to our food supply as pollinators of important and essential crops. On the North American Prairies nothing could be further from the truth. While there are fruit crops, such as citrus, blueberries, cherries, almonds, plums, apples and members of the cucumber family that do benefit significantly from bee pollination, 95 per cent or more of our major Canadian prairie crops do not require honeybees. Only seed canola production requires honeybee pollination on the Canadian prairies, involving some 80,000 beehives.

Almost all of the major crops grown on the Prairies, if not all of North America, corn, soybean, pea, bean, forage grass, flax, barley, oat, wheat, rye, lentil and chickpea are self- or wind-pollinated. Only sunflowers, canola, favabeans and buckwheat benefit somewhat from bees in addition to normal wind pollination and natural wild pollinators. Because honeybees do a poor job of pollination in alfalfa, we require leafcutter bees for pollination. Most trees are wind pollinated. Remember besides honeybees there are hundreds of other species of bees and pollinating flies, butterflies and moths that visit crop flowers for both pollen and nectar. Horticultural crops such as potatoes, cabbages, asparagus, tomatoes, all root crops such as carrots, beets, parsnips, etc. do not require bees or other pollinators for crop production, except perhaps for true seed production.

So where does this critical need for our “invasive pest” the honey bee come from? Until the Europeans settled the Americas, honey bees were unknown on this continent and the indigenous crops managed very well, such as corn, beans, potatoes, tomatoes and squash.

We repeatedly hear that two-thirds of our crops are dependent on honey bees: rubbish. What about the other countless thousands of pollinator species? Well perhaps the almond and citrus industries need honey bees for pollination. Why? Because these trees grow in virtual desserts where there are no native or indigenous pollinators due to the absence of weeds and other vegetation that would suit wild pollinators.

The almond crop in the U.S. generates over US$21 billion annually on around one million acres in areas of California that has little in the way of native pollinators. As a consequence, the almond crop alone requires almost two million colonies of U.S. bees which amounts to about three-quarters of the U.S. bee colonies. U.S. citrus crops also require many tens of thousands of bee colonies for effective fruit set. Many U.S. beekeepers make most of their money not from honey but from crop pollination at around $150 to $200 per colony.

Much ado about honey

In terms of total honey production, Canada produces around 75 million pounds of honey, the U.S. around 150 million pounds and China is the world’s biggest producer at some 10 times the U.S. honey crop.

In Canada the Prairies produce some 80 per cent of Canada’s honey with much of the essential nectar coming from the canola crop. Prairie honey producers seem to have no problems with neonictinoids despite their use as canola seed treatments. Contrast this with the use of this insecticide on corn and soybeans in Ontario — that are not even sources of honey — purportedly affecting survival of the honeybee colonies. Reminds me of one of Shakespeare’s plays, Much Ado About Nothing or pinning the tail on the donkey.

What is honey? Honey is a general aromatic bee regurgitated mixture of fructose and glucose obtained from flowers and has a calorie content of around 64 calories per tablespoon and otherwise non-significant nutrient content. Raw honey should not be fed to infants or individuals with weak immune systems since it may contain endospores of Clostridium botulinum causing illness or death.

Honey is primarily made up of fructose sugar so like some of our cola drinks it could honestly be classified as high fructose sugar. Medically there are lots of claims about the health benefits of honey just like powdered rhinoceros horn. In actual fact no honey has even been shown to have any medicinal value whatsoever except for the statement, “honey is good for you.”

Personally, I enjoy more than the odd teaspoon of honey or honey-flavoured foods including mead (honey wine). By all means we should endeavour to do our best to foster the honey industry, but at the same time crop farmers should not be blamed for the honey industry problems. After all, it is the farming community with its cultivated fields of flowers and other flowering weeds that provides the bees with their main or primary source of nectar and pollen.

Beekeepers must control the pest infestations in their hives and collaborate with responsible farmers in order to successfully maintain and profit from their industry. Honey producers, together with their bees, can then help optimize specific crop production worldwide where and when it is really needed, leaving honey as a sweet pleasurable by-product.

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Braul bought his first batch of larvae in three two-gallon pails for $700 from his neighbour, Bob Asher.

It was the late 1960s. At the time, only Asher and another neighbour, Eric Dick, had made the investment in leafcutters. “The bees came originally from Parma, Idaho. Bob was a honeybee keeper and got interested in these leafcutters, and then we got interested and bought some bees from him. We started very small. We didn’t know much and learned as we went along,” says Braul.

The Brauls got a lot of help from researchers at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, especially Gordon Hobbs, who had developed a way to domesticate a wild leafcutter bee for the pollination of alfalfa crops in 1964.

Alfalfa seed was an attractive cash crop, “and in those years they were always looking for alternatives,” says Rich Braul, Henry’s son, who now runs the family’s 320-acre operation. “You can’t get alfalfa seed without pollination, so that’s why we use these bees. They’re a lot more efficient than honeybees in alfalfa. A leafcutter bee pollinates almost every flower it visits.”

“You never do anything without investing something,” adds Henry. “We weren’t really expecting too much the first years — it was an experiment. A couple of times we almost quit, but we kept on going, and now the industry is very big.”

Leafcutter bees are ideally suited to Western Canada, according to Rich, and the industry has grown with the advent of their use in hybrid canola seed production.

The Brauls use the leafcutter species Megachile rotundata, a European bee used around the world due to its efficiency as a pollinator.

But they’re also a pleasure to work with. “They’re very good pollinators, and they’re easily domesticated,” he says. “Bumblebees are good pollinators, but they’ll fight each other.”

Also, leafcutters won’t sting unless provoked. “And all they do is reproduce while pollinating your crop,” says Rich. “They can double or triple their numbers in a season.

“Their life cycle is just one year. You hatch the larvae in spring and release them in shelters in the field where the nesting material has been placed. They line the tunnel with leaf pieces, provide the cell with nectar and pollen, and lay an egg. The egg develops into a larva, which spins a cocoon around itself, and overwinters in this form. The bees only live six to eight weeks in the summer, then they’re finished,” he says. “So then you take the nesting material in with all the larvae, extract the larvae from it, keep as many as you need for next year, and sell the excess.”

The Brauls’ business is threefold: alfalfa seed, leafcutter bee larvae — and manufacturing custom machinery they’ve developed over the years to automate the extraction process.

The nesting material is made of wood boards grooved on both sides and stacked to create long, thin tunnels roughly the size of pencils, or Styrofoam blocks with the tunnels moulded into them, Rich says. Leafcutters then use these tunnels to create half-inch-long cells in which they seal their eggs.

In the fall, the Brauls bring the blocks in, dry them and then use a custom-built “guillotine-type” machine to push the cocoons out of the grooves.

“Once the cocoons have been pushed out, they are stuck together in long ‘pencils,’ which need to be broken up into individual cells, so we built a machine to do this,” says Rich. “More recently we also started building conveyors to bring the cocoons from the extraction machine up to the cell breaker screening machine for processing loose cells.”

Each year, the Brauls process about 1,300 of these blocks between December and March. The dormant larvae, still encased in cocoons, are sold to leafcutter bee brokers who in turn sell them in the U.S. and to Canadian seed canola producers.

The Brauls take pride in their operation and value being able to do the work themselves; they’ve been able to stay small by excelling in a niche market.

“It’s been a good crop for us, and the whole area benefits from this crop,” says Rich. “In Rosemary, we share a lot of information between farmers. We’re still learning. There are so many variables with alfalfa and leafcutter bees and there is a lot of information to share. I think this has really helped the industry do well here.”

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The finger has most recently been pointed at a chemical compound known as the neonicotinoid class of pesticide, which in the past decade or so has been used in seed treatments of common field crops such as canola, corn and soybean.

The critics suggest the pesticide is intended to systemically spread from the seed coating through the plant to provide protection against a number of pests, but in the process is killing pollinating bees through contaminated pollen and nectar. Manufacturers of the products as well as some scientists say there isn’t sufficient chemical in pollen or nectar to harm bees.

In the meantime the issue raises an emotional debate about what harm agricultural technology may be causing the environment. Dr. Ieuan Evans, a long-time Alberta based plant pathologist and a horticulture specialists in his own right, has his views on the situation.

In a recent article in an Agri-Trend Agrology newsletter, Strategic News, Dr. Evans who doesn’t have to be coaxed too hard to share his opinions, sets out what he considers are some truths about honeybees. Don’t get this wrong. Evans says the agriculture industry needs to have a good working relationship with beekeepers and of course be responsible with the proper use of all crop protection products. He’s just saying the whole issue needs to be kept in perspective.

As Dr. Evans says…

The public “believes that the honeybee is a ‘canary in the coal mine’ indicator that conventional agriculture threatening their very food source. I call baloney. Here are the facts.”

Point No .1

“Firstly, honeybees can technically be classified as invasive species since the honeybee, Aphis melifera, is not native to the Americas. The honeybee is native to Europe, Asia and Africa and in these continents, it exists in 20 or more strains, all of which are compatible breeding wise. Honeybees are now distributed worldwide, present on every continent except Antarctica. Worldwide, there are some 20,000 bee species including bumble bees.”

Point No. 2

“Secondly, most of our major prairie crops do not require honey-bees for pollination. Beekeepers and various and sundry individuals frequently tout the extreme value of bees to our food supply as pollinators of important and essential crops. However, until the Europeans settled the Americas, honeybees were unknown on this continent and the indigenous crops such as corn, beans, potatoes, tomatoes and squash managed very well.

“All of the major crops currently grown on the Prairies corn, soybean, pea, bean, forage grass, flax, barley, oat, wheat, rye, lentil and chickpea are either self- or wind-pollinated. Only sunflowers, canola, fava beans and buckwheat benefit from bees in addition to normal wind pollination. Alfalfa requires leaf cutter bees for pollination. Most trees are wind pollinated. Besides honeybees, there are hundreds of other species of native bee species and pollinating flies that visit crop flowers for both pollen and nectar. Horticultural crops such as potatoes, cabbages, asparagus, tomatoes, all root crops such as carrots, beets, parsnips do not require bees for crop production, except for production of true seed. Fruit crops, such as citrus, blueberries, cherries, almonds, plums, apples and members of the cucumber family do benefit significantly from bee pollination.”

Point No. 3

“Thirdly, in general producers have good relationships with the beekeepers that place beehives on their lands. While we are fully aware that insecticides will kill bees, farmers growing agricultural or horticultural crops are generally cognizant of the beehives in or near their cropland. Bee kills are avoided when farmers are informed. Communication is key in reducing bee deaths due to pesticide application.

“The furor over Colony Collapse Disorder has largely been blamed on pesticides; bees bringing the chemical home to the brood. When colonies die out or show very poor vigour or honey production, the easiest target to blame is not these natural causes but pesticides, in particular insecticides.

“However, more likely it is due to a combination of bee diseases such as foulbrood and chalkbrood, pests such as Varroa and Acarina mites and hive beetles. Honeybees have been “domesticated” for thousands of years in the “Old World” as prime producers of honey. Domestication has resulted in honeybees accumulating numerous fungal, bacterial, viral diseases, and insect and mite pests that now infest beehive colonies in North America. These pests and diseases certainly came from related honeybees species and likely other wild bee species. Unfortunately, these destructive pests and diseases can weaken even kill honeybees, particularly if the bees are subject to additional stress such as movement of hives or inclement weather condition such as wind, rain and cold.

“On top of that, Varroa mites have developed resistance to the miticides and the bacteria responsible for foulbrood have developed resistance to the main antibiotic used, making control difficult. The present concern over bee deaths due to corn or soybean seed treated with neonicotinoids has always seemed very farfetched to me.

“How can the insecticide dust from planted treated seeds arise and infest flowers in and around cropland? The dilution on the insecticide factor alone would be huge. And a recent report from Health Canada states that seed coated with imidacloprid, an insecticide known as a neonicotinoid, does not pose a risk to bee health.

“Now I enjoy the odd teaspoon of honey and the sound of honeybees pollinating my Mayday trees, and of course, we must endeavour to do our best to foster the honey industry, but at the same time we, as famers should not be blamed for honey industry problems.

“Producers must continue to use good bee-safe management tools and beekeepers need to control the pest infestations in their hives and to collaborate with responsible farmers in order to successfully maintain and profit from their industry. Honey producers together with their bees can then help optimize specific crop production where and when honeybees are needed.”

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